The United States should exercise sound strategic judgment in dealing with China, China’s defence minister Li Shangfu said while meeting veteran U.S. diplomat Henry Kissinger in Beijing on Tuesday.

China has been committed to building stable, predictable and constructive Sino-U.S. relations, and hopes the United States can work with it to promote the healthy development of relations between their two militaries, the defence ministry quoted Li as saying.

Washington was aware of Kissinger’s travel to China but he is a private citizen and was not acting on behalf of the U.S. government, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said.

The meeting followed recent visits to China by senior U.S. officials, including U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, which aimed to smooth over tensions between the two superpowers.

The talks took place as high-level defence dialogue between China and the United States remains frozen and military deployments across East Asia intensify.

Li’s meeting with Kissinger expounded on Sino-U.S. relations. He said “some people on the U.S. side have failed to move in the same direction as the Chinese side, resulting in China-United States relations hovering at a low point since the establishment of diplomatic relations,” according to a statement from China’s Defence Ministry.

“We have always been committed to building stable, predictable and constructive Sino-U.S. relations, and we hope that the U.S. will work with China to implement the consensus of the heads of State of the two countries and jointly promote the healthy and stable development of the relationship between the two militaries.”

Kissinger said: “The United States and China should eliminate misunderstandings, coexist peacefully and avoid confrontation. History and practice have continually proved that neither the United States nor China can afford to treat the other as an adversary.”

Kissinger, now aged 100, served as U.S. secretary of state and national security adviser in the administrations of presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. He played a key diplomatic role in the normalisation of relations between Washington and Beijing in the 1970s and has visited China and met Chinese officials regularly since leaving office.

Chinese officials had informed Blinken during meetings in Beijing last month that Kissinger would be visiting, the State Department’s Miller told reporters at a regular press briefing.

Kissinger might later brief U.S. officials on his meetings, as he has done in the past, the spokesperson said.

“I will say he was there under his own volition, not acting on behalf of the United States government,” Miller added.